NGSA Results…English pass rate rises, but some slippage in Maths

Jun 29, 2018 News

Guyana has recorded its best overall pass rate in English at the National Grade National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), which determines which high school students will attend the 2018/19 school year, which begins in September.
The results which were released yesterday by the Ministry of Education showed that 60% of the 14,145 students who sat the exam scored 50% or more in English this year as compared to 54% in 2016. However, in Mathematics, 38% of the students who wrote the examination gained 50% or more compared to 45% in 2017.
As it relates to Mathematics, there was a 37.49 pass rate in 2015 and 13.85 in 2016.
Science and Social Studies saw 46% of students who wrote those exams gain 50% or more.
Announcing the results yesterday at the National Centre for Education Resource Development (NCERD) in Kingston, Minister of Education Nicolette Henry said that the improved performances are really an output indicator.

Minister of Education, Nicolette Henry

“It is an indication of a lot of hard work. A lot of systems were put in place; a lot of procedures and a lot of initiatives were implemented by the Ministry of Education,” Henry stated.
She explained that when the Coalition Government took up office in 2015, decisions were made to invest more money into education and by recruiting additional supporting staff, particularly in the interior locations.
Additionally, she explained that the Ministry developed and strengthened existing programmes. Henry noted that last year the Ministry undertook an intervention, which was intended to improve results.
“Results come out of a process; it just doesn’t appear. And it is representative of the hard work of a lot of people,” Henry explained.
The Minister noted that they mainstreamed the Mathematics intervention to employ some of the methodologies used in the emergency intervention across the other subject areas, including English.
Henry stated that the successes speak to the support, political will, the leadership and the decision to improve the lives and wellbeing of Guyanese through education.
“We know you can only develop a country’s people through education,” Henry noted.
Asked about the lower performances in Mathematics, the Minister said that the Ministry has to continue the intervention programmes implemented last year with more vigour. Henry recalled that there were times when the overall pass rate would be in the teens, but those ‘days are now behind us’.
“We will continue to see good results, because we will continue to invest in our people and we will continue to implement strategies that will result in the benefit of our people, because that is what we committed to do,” Henry assured.
In 2016, the Ministry of Education engaged the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to improve the quality of all primary grade assessments.